Horses graze in the fields near our house. We often see them being walked or ridden as we walk to and from school and my girls like to wave ‘hello’ as they pass. This week, we saw a foal which got my 4-year-old thinking about how horse-babies are born and whether or not they have belly buttons.
Human evolution was a topic of conversation at the dinner table. My 9-year-old declared that “humans used to be monkeys a long, long time ago”; my 4-year-old worried that she might have monkey children when she grows up.
I explained, as in my answer to Why do monkeys still exist?, that humans have evolved over millions of years, and that monkeys and apes and all other creatures have evolved over millions of years too. I showed her a book called The Story of Life and said that, like other animals, humans have evolved over a long, long time.
She didn’t like the thought of being an animal, so we had a think about what being an animal means…
simple scimum 